Guest: Colia Lafayette Clark (July 21,1940 – November 4, 2022), was a committed Pan Africanist, she spent a lifetime in activist work in the areas of civil rights, human rights, women’s rights, workers rights and rights for the homeless and youth. She was the Green Party’s candidate for the United States Senate in New York in 2010 and 2012.
She was a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and played a key role establishing equal voting rights in Selma, Alabama. She was also an organizer with the Birmingham campaign, as well as throughout Mississippi. She was chair of Grandmothers for the Release of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Clark was born in rural Hinds county Mississippi and spent most of her childhood years in Jackson, Mississippi. Each fall until her late teens, Clark’s family migrated to the Mississippi Delta for cotton picking season. She was born into a land owning clan, but her young father and mother secured a share cropper contract with a local white farmer. The family was an activist family with her father and maternal grandfather working on projects with the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in the neighboring county of Copiah.
